"That's a concentrate," reminds Stephen DeAngelo, proud owner of the
three-year-old collective. DeAngelo's facility boasts 20,000 members
and grossed more than $10 million last year. Even amid the recession,
lines are a constant phenomenon and DeAngelo is looking to double his
space. Hundreds of new customers sign up monthly, attracted partly by
the immaculate facility: its savvy, well-paid "budtenders" and $40,
eighth-ounce pot dosages. But part of the appeal is the new placards
— the result of a disruptive new service by Harborside's partners
at the Analytical Laboratory Project.

"For the first time in the 3,000-year history of human cannabis
consumption, consumers will be provided a scientific assessment of the
safety and potency of products prior to ingesting them," DeAngelo
announced in December.

In the months since, DeAngelo's patrons have enjoyed mankind's most
detailed product information thanks to the country's first commercial
marijuana lab. Arrest and jail remain a constant worry for him and the
lab's two owners. But they believe that if pot is truly medicine, it
needs quality assurance and dosage information. The Analytical
Laboratory Project wants to be the source of that information.
The lab's ultimate goal is to provide testing for half of the 300
dispensaries in California.

Behind DeAngelo, a cross section of the East Bay shuffles in and out
of the pot club's well-lit main floor. They buy briskly and
nonchalantly, as though it's a bank or a pharmacy. Powerful, normative
forces have begun to transform the $65 billion domestic black market in
ganja. DeAngelo and his partners want to be the custodians of that
transformation.

Indeed, positive hits for pathogenic mold are already changing
grower operations. "You smoke ten random samples of cannabis and you've
most likely smoked aspergillus [mold]," said Dave, one of the lab's two
founders. "It's in there, often at unacceptable levels. Now it's up to
the industry to respond. We also are not in a position where we want to
make enemies and piss people off. We want to see it happen in the best
way for the movement and the industry to kind of just naturally
evolve."

While the distributed nature of California's cannabis supply network
obviously benefits mom-and-pop growers, it doesn't encourage quality
assurance. Consequently, Dave and his peers believe that some pot
consumers are in danger.

"It's expensive to test every single thing that comes through the
door — that's the price you pay with a decentralized supply
system," Dave said. "But that's what you've got. You've got five pounds
coming from here and two from there and one individual. I mean, a dog
walks in the grow room, and wags its tail — anything can be
coming off that dog's tail. It's gross. Fertilizers with E. coli.
Compost teas that they don't make right, anaerobic tea that has
elevated levels of E. coli and salmonella. It has to come. There's no
way that this is sustainable. All it takes is one story of
immune-compromised people dying from aspergillus infection. The myth
that cannabis hasn't killed a single person in 3,000 years is allowed
to go on. Well, it's not cannabis that kills people, it's all the shit
that's in it."

Talk about a buzz kill.

Backstage in the bowels of Harborside, the air is thick with
terpenoids — the pungent, unmistakable odor molecules of
cannabis. Rick Pfrommer, Harborside's hefty linebacker of a pot buyer,
mans the "intake" room where the collective's 400 growers wholesale to
the club in eye-popping one-, two-, or five-pound bags. Everyone from
mom-and-pop operators with their dogs to professional growers from
Oakland warehouses wait daily in an antechamber before being ushered in
one at a time.

It is here, surrounded by file cabinets, computers, and posters
featuring holographic closeups of buds, that the medicine begins its
long road to the sales counter. It starts with paperwork and a small
plastic-bagged test sample. Analytical Laboratory Project cofounders
and operators Dave and Addison usually show up in the afternoon to pick
up the day's new samples to test. Both are in their early thirties, and
dressed casually. They have a mentor-student relationship with
DeAngelo, who is sort of a legend in these parts.

"He's older and he's this personality," Dave said. "We take a lot of
guidance from him."

DeAngelo is in his fifties and wears a long-sleeve shirt, tie, and
corduroy pants with two gray ponytails peaking out from underneath a
little fedora. The Washington, DC-born drug reformer and charter member
of Americans for Safe Access moved out West in 2000 after founding and
selling the industrial hemp company Ecolution in the '90s. After the
passage of Prop. 215, which legalized medical marijuana in California,
DeAngelo grew medical cannabis but was shocked at the thugs running
dispensaries.

"They seemed to have more in common with buying drugs down an alley
in a bad city than it did with going into a medical facility and
getting medicine," he recalled. So after Oakland cracked down on such
facilities, DeAngelo decided to lead by example. "I couldn't think of
anything more important to advance the cause than to provide a model of
safe, affordable cannabis distribution that would be respectful not
only of the patients but also of the neighbors and the community as a
whole."

In 2005, DeAngelo began the process of complying with Oakland's
rigorous new permitting process. He spent $400,000 over eleven months
and received one of only four coveted permits. Harborside opened on
October 3, 2006, the very day the federal Drug Enforcement Agency was
raiding pot clubs in San Francisco. "I always expected I might face
that moment of truth, but I didn't expect it five minutes after we
opened," he said.